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In NEW’s seven-city study of Northwest cities and sprawl—part of our Cascadia Scorecard project—Boise ranked worst. What’s heartening is that many Boise community leaders, members of the media, and advocates in Idaho are bent on doing something about it. An Idaho Statesman editorial this weekend—which cited our energy and sprawl research extensively—laments the city’s smart-growth record and notes the strong connection between Idaho’s sprawl and energy habits. (Idaho also consumes...

Last week, the National Center for Health Statistics issued the results of a survey revealing that the share of American births that resulted from unwanted pregnancies increased from 9 percent in 1995 to 14 percent in 2002. (Seattle Times reports here.) That’s bad news. It’s also puzzling. It’s bad news because babies conceived by accident, when mothers do not want to have a child (or another child), tend to have...

A recent report (pdf) shows that incomes have risen more slowly in British Columbia than in the rest of Canada in the past two decades. In one article, economists offer the usual suspects of low investment in productivity-raising equipment and a shift towards the low-paying service sector. But, citing a more laid-back “West Coast lifestyle”, they also suggests that some BC residents are deliberately choosing jobs that pay less in...

From British Columbia, more evidence of the danger of hitching an economy to resource extraction and commodity exports. As the Vancouver Sunexplains today, the BC forest industry is bearing the brunt of a "perfect storm." A rising Canadian dollar, higher energy prices, and the ongoing softwood lumber dispute with the United States are combining to cripple the forest industry. Not surprisingly, the industry wants relief from the government in the...

There’s an interesting article in today’s Vancouver Sun on the woes of BC’s coastal forestry industry—which, apparently, has had only one profitable year over the last decade.  That seems like a pretty astonishing losing streak—and pretty clear evidence that the industry needs to do some serious thinking about itself.  From the article: Hammered by changing markets, global competition, softwood-lumber tariffs and now a Canadian dollar that is stripping export industries...

This article—which, in large measure, holds up Vancouver as a model for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan—makes this arresting claim: [D]owntown Vancouver has recently eclipsed Manhattan as North America’s highest density residential area. This claim came as quite a bit of a surprise to me—I thought I was a Vancouver statistics geek, but I’d never heard that before.  And after fiddling on the internet for a bit, I now realize...

Does sprawl kill?  Looks like it.  This study found that people who live in sprawling counties—places with low population densities and poorly connected street grids, and with rigid segregation between stores, businesses and residences—are more likely to die in a car crash.  Apparently, living in the sort of place where you can’t get anywhere without a car makes you drive more.  And people who drive more tend to crash more. ...

Stanley Park in Vancouver, BC, has been named one of the world’s ten best public spaces by the Project for Public Spaces. They write: Within walking distance from downtown in a high-rise residential neighborhood with a population density similar to Manhattan, [Stanley Park] is easily accessible by foot, bike and car. Once there, you can take in some of the most spectacular natural settings of any public park in North...

In January 2005, we published a piece by guest contributor and University of Montana economist Thomas Michael Power that took issue with a report by BC research center Urban Futures on the importance of natural resource exports to the province’s economy. Power disagreed with Urban Futures’ position, arguing that true economic development has little to do with exports and everything to do with creating a web of local economic relationships....

Editor’s note: The following essay is by blog contributor (and former Vancouver city councillor) Gordon Price, a reprint from his "Price Tags" newsletter and Business in Vancouver. (See the Price Tags version for accompanying images.) Why is the Provincial Government going to spend $3 to $5 billion on a strategy which it acknowledges will not work? If, as everyone seems to say, we can’t build our way out of traffic...